Light Weapons
by DeviantWriter2015
Summary: It just got built and just got installed: the new laser cannon for Harun Berna's equally new Raven. But a new alien craft is on the horizon. It's time to see what the new weapons can really do.
1. Light Show

**Light Weapons**

AN: I realized that I liked writing about the sub-to-sub combat in my story Enemy Below. Figured I'd do a nice little novella of sorts with the Raven interceptor in Enemy Unknown 2012.

The title "Light Weapons" comes from a chapter in "The Sky Road" by Ken MacLeod. The book is more politics and plot than sci-fi. It's OK-ish.

The Raven is not a great craft and the laser cannon is not a great craft gun. The Long War mod changes the later, increasing the range (really just making it so that the Raven flies up into laser cannon range instantly rather than gradually). The Vanilla laser cannon in Enemy Unknown is better than the one in UFO Defense, which travels about as far as a man with his legs hobbled, can piss. Both are better the gauss cannon from Terror From the Deep, which has all the problems of the Laser Cannon, but you have to manufacture ammo.

Holy crap, I am rambling again. Let's get into it. 

[1]

"Allah has been generous." thought the pilot as he looked at his craft, not caring if the engineers around him heard. He thought it aloud, as he sometimes did, and he spoke with a smile on his face.

The fast-attack fighter, the F-24 "Raven" had _literally_ just come into Den Mother just this morning. It'd spent the first half of its first day getting refueled, with an immense orange tube jammed up its bottom.

The other half of its first day was spent fitting the new craft weapon onto it.

"Allah had nothing to do with it partner." came a voice on his left, and he turned.  
Dwayne Kent had thick goggles over his eyes, and slight brown stubble on his face. He wore the green sweat-shirt and gray denim pants of most XCOM personnel; but the man, like most of the engineers wore a hardhat. Peterson's was white instead of yellow, to show that he was the man in charge. To hear him say it, nobody could put a fucking gun on a fucking plane the way Kent could (and there was nothing Kent _can't do_ ).

A Southern Fried Genius. That's what the other base personnel thought of the guy. Harun actually knew what that meant too. The Engineer from that Team Fortress game was like that. His accent was beautiful and so was this man's.

The pilot, Harun Berna smiled indulgently at him.

"I'm serious partner." Dr. Kent said, and yes he _did_ have a doctorate thank you very much. "That laser cannon all had been naught but a twinkle in my eyes two weeks ago."

"I believe that doctor." Harun said.

"That mouthy little prick Hector Price couldn't have thought up something like that. You wanna know that barrel of monkey spunk thought would make a good weapon for our ships."

Harun didn't even bother asking what. He just waited.

"The _Phoenix Cannon._ " Kent said, and did a quaint little bow, and described the details of the weapon to him. It was capable of massive burst damage, but it had very short range. You'd have to be _making love_ to the alien craft in front if you wanted any chance of hitting it at all.

"That sounds like…" Harun paused, wondering if Ken was leading him into some sort of trap. "Like just a regular cannon. Like what we've been using on planes since World War 2."

"Holy shit on a stick in my dick!" Kent laughed. "The man _gets_ it!"

Harun laughed too.

[2]

It was May 14. XCOM soldiers from the main base in North America had stopped an alien abduction. Harun had watched the results from the barracks, nibbling his fingers as he stared at the small TV attached to his bunk. Petra's name hadn't shown up. That was good. But then his guts twisted inside of him as Richard White's name was bordered in red.

KIA.

"No." he whispered, burying his face in his hands. When he finally had the strength, he looked back at the screen to see.

The Mutons were becoming a fairly frequent enemy for the ground troops now.

He shook his head helplessly. Things were only going to get worse. A terror mission was on the horizon. The last one had been at the end of February, and everyone thought they were long overdue.

Alien craft were not appearing as often as people had thought they would, and Harun was pulled two ways on this. On one hand, it meant perhaps their air game wasn't that strong (or not strong enough); and that was good. It meant Harun wasn't needed. On the other hand…it meant Harun wasn't needed. It was a dark thought, a sinful thought for certain, but he wanted one UFO to at least show its face in this neck of the woods…so that he could remove said face from its shoulders.

And he got his wish the very next day.

[3]  
May 15

The siren blared into life in the middle of the night. Harun had never known how restless or jittery a sleeper he was until that night. He'd practically gone _flying_ out of his bunk. Of course, it was the top bunk; and he'd nearly hit his head on the ceiling on the way and collapsed on the floor.

When he turned and saw that it _was_ indeed a terror mission, he thought about jumping back in bed. Terror missions were the obligation of ground troops. There was nothing any pilot in XCOM could do to shoot down the terror ships before they landed.

Then his eyes widened as these words went across the screen: ALIENS BOMBING SHIPS NEAR SOUTH AFRICA.

"Allah." Harun heard himself saying. But the voice was so frayed and hushed, it sounded like the voice of a stranger. "I ask for your protection against Satan the Exile."

"Staff Sergeant Harun Berna," went a calm female voice from the bed's speakers. "Please report to the hangar immediately."

He went.

Once his helmet was on, he was briefed by Major Simon Schwartz. According to the major, the bombing attack was barely fifteen minutes old and was still underway. The USS Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, both operating off the coast of Africa, had been targeted.

Both had been destroyed.

Now whatever had destroyed them was moving north, toward South Africa.

"A bombing ship." Harun said, too no one in particular.

The major nodded soberly. "When you get in your cockpit, we'll pull up some video feeds of the thing. Send them to you."

"Thank you sir." Harun said.

"No, Staff Sergeant." the major corrected. "Thank _you_."

Harun went through systems check. Fuel. Weapons. Radar. Comms. Electric and thermal countermeasures (of course, it was unknown effective they would be against whatever targeting systems the aliens used, but it was better than having none at all).  
"Den this is Raven-Three. Systems check all green."

"Roger that Three." went Den really a man in his early 50s. "Stand by for catapult launch."

 _Oh boy._ Harun thought nervously. He'd done this before, he just didn't like roller coasters. The catapult inclined until he was pointed up nearly 90 degrees, his thruster warming up the entire time.

"You have the sky Raven-Three." Den said.

"Copy that Den. My sky."

The rather dark cave of the Den Mother base in Africa gave way to the bright African sky, specifically that of Madagascar. There was one other base, Arab Spring it was called, that was over in Egypt. He was glad he wouldn't have to fly the plane completely across the entire continent. Spring's pilots would be doing just that if something happened to Harun and Estevez.

Behind him, another Raven from the base closed in. That was Raven-Two, Maria Estevez, or "Mars" as she liked to be called. Also a Staff Sergeant.

"You ready for this Mars?" he asked on comms.

"Hell yeah I'm ready." she growled, and it was a pleasant growl.

"Good to hear."

" _You_ don't sound so eager." she said, getting into formation on his left.

"Because I'm not." Harun admitted.

It was just the two of them. Den Mother, just like all XCOM bases, had limited hangar space.

Another Raven appeared behind them. That was Airman First Class Ryan Palomo.

 _"I'm not excited either!"_ Palomo said.

 _"What a damn baby!"_ Mars shouted.

"Let's focus up people!" Harun said. His sharpness was born of worry. "Mars is your craft armed with a laser cannon?"

"Yessir!" she cried happily.

Turning his head around, Harun saw he need not have asked her. He could see the laser cannon shiny and red on the rightmost hardpoint of her gun. He'd expected to be more tubular in appearance, because of course comic books had lasers like that. But the laser cannon XCOM made was boxy in appearance, though damn if it didn't still look wonderful on the Raven.

"What about you Palomo?"

 _"I only have the Avalanche missiles."_ he stated. His Raven had come literally three hours ago. The Kent and the other engineers had barely managed to get it properly refueled. The Palomo had been certain he'd be sitting this fight out.

 _Glad he's here though,_ Harun thought and knew Mars would agree.

He contacted Den Mother, asked if they had a surveillance feed of the bomber. There'd been a Hawkeye recon craft in the area. Now there wasn't. Harun shook his head, sucking air through his teeth, reported the info to his team.

 _"Damn it!"_ Harun could a banging sound as Mars bunched the inside of the canopy.

All they could do now was go forward and hope.

And hope.

[4]

They were upon it and it was upon them.

They were off the cost of South Africa, themselves flanked by the air force response of the country: JAS 39 Gripen attack fighters of the SANDF. Two whole squadrons of the bastards…and intel said they were supposed to be some of the best.

The alien bomber was on the horizon.

The squadrons leader, Jack Frost, came on the comms. _"Port Elizabeth behind us has already been evacuated."_

"Allah is great." Harun said, shakily. The words felt hollow in his mouth all of a sudden.

 _"Indeed."_ Frost said and Harun imagined he heard quite the tone of dryness.

The alien vessel was on the horizon. It was a large ship, like the assault carriers the aliens used for their terror missions.

 _"It looks like an egg carton!"_ Palomo said.

 _"Palomo are you stupid?"_

"Quiet!" Harun shouted. He zoomed in. To his credit, Palomo wasn't really _wrong_. The top half of the UFO was boxy, save for the slightly rounded top. The "eggs" hanging from the bottom glowed with a faint blue light at their tips. Perhaps its payload, perhaps its targeting system.

"We have any data on the bombs? What kind they are? Dummy or smart? Effective range?"

As if to answer at least some of the questions, one of the eggs detached from the ship. Immediately, some propulsion systems kicked in. The egg oriented itself so the glowing tip faced toward Harun's incoming squadron. It came rushing at them.

 _"Shit!"_ Frost cried. _"It's firing!"_

"Everyone!" Harun roared. "Take evasive action!"

 _God,_ Harun thought. He was leading the squadron, and so he banked up. Palomo would bank right and Mars would go left.

As he went up, keeping the thrust near maximum so he would not stall out.

He pitched up until he was upside down and heading toward the coast. He could make out the egg, flying low and fast toward the port. When it hit, there was a searing flash of light. Harun turned his eyes away, feeling burning needles press through his suit, through his skin.

"Oh God." said Frost. "Oh shit…oh God. Oh God…oh shit."

Harun looked at the damage…and shockingly enough there wasn't _much._ He'd expected half of Port Elizabeth to be a burning crater right now. Instead, a shipyard had been turned into a twisted web of smoldering metal.

Harun swung the Raven around. The bomber hadn't fired another egg, and was just ambling toward the coast.

His radar started picking up more signatures. Smaller UFOs, coming from the south, where the bomber itself had come from. Perhaps they'd spawned from some hatch in the back of the bomber. Some hanger.

"Bandits. 10'o clock and 1'o clock high!"

 _"Are they scouts or fighters?"_ Palomo asked.

No way to know from this distance. Both small scouts and fighters had the same sleek "flying saucer" appearance.

 _"We'll know when they start shooting at us."_ Mars stated.

"Move in to engage. Those things are probably the bombers escorts. Keep your distance from the bomber anyways. It may have defensive weapons _even_ if it needs to be escorted."

There were at least of dozen of them, and as they clashed in the air, Harun saw that they _were_ indeed fighters and not scouts. Scouts had one light plasma cannon, that they knew of, while fighters had two. The twin plasma cut brilliantly through the sky. It was met with a tepid answer of the Stingray missiles of the Gripens.

Two of the SANDF fighters were immediately knocked out of the sky. They didn't spin out into the welcoming embrace of the ocean. They were blown up completely, given their pilots no time at all to eject.

 _"Damn it!"_ cried Frost. _"Nickels and Jackson are down!"_

"Keep it together comrades!" Harun cried. "Any confirmed kills?!"

Everyone answered in unison. _"Negative!"_

Then they did their dance in the air, picking out a target, banking to follow it, losing it, finding another target and banking to track that one, more missile fire, the Stingrays accurate enough thanks to their guidance system and propulsion, at some points cornering so abruptly they formed acute angles, and sometimes even that wasn't enough to catch an alien vessel, some of them shaking as they were struck, but _only_ shaking as the Stingray missiles barely made a dent in their armor.

 _"I'm gaining on a bandit!"_ Palomo said suddenly, Harun looked for his Raven in the melee and saw that he could not.

A rush of hot plasma sailed at him, and alien fighter passed him on the right, into his 5 or 6 o'clock. Another sailed laterally from his 10 to his 2. Suddenly, a bright ray of red light met it in the air. The fighter _did_ tremble. There was perhaps a small explosion, a part of the craft that glowed brighter than even the laser cannon warranted.

 _"Holy shit!"_ cried Frost. _"What the hell was that?"_

"Laser cannons." Harun reported. "Our newest weapons. Focus on engaging the escorts!"

The alien fighter did an evasive maneuver, rolling to its right. The follow up laser blast missed the craft by a narrow margin. Maria's third blast did not miss at all. The alien craft flew away as if punched; and yes there _was_ an explosion, and half of the fighter was shattered in fire and the other half corkscrewed into the ocean.

"Good job Maria!"

 _"You know it Turk."_ she said. She was quieter now. Her voice was all blood and iron.

A bandit entered into Harun's 11. He turned with it. The targeting reticule was a thin circle surrounded by a thick one. The reticule was an advanced system: it didn't turn with his head, it turned with his _eye_.

The cursor glowed red.

The fighter seemed to get wise that he was on it, and banked all the way to the right before Harun even got a shot off. Damn but the things were above and beyond maneuverable. They didn't have to roll to one side and pitch up: all they had to do was just _turn,_ as if they were driving a car.

As he lost it, the fighter was struck by another one, a missile. One of Palomo's Avalanches perhaps. The fighter wobbled from side to side, not turning or banking anymore but flying straight. Maybe the missile had knocked the senses out of whatever had been flying it.

Another explosion on the coast. The bomber had laid another egg.

Harun banked to follow the shaking craft and opened up with his cannon. He was worried the weapon would blind him. That it would wash out the entire canopy in red, along with his eyes. But the ray was thinner than he expected. Much thinner than Maria's had appeared.

It drilled into the alien fighter just as effectively. Harun saw the impact point becoming a boiling red. He fired again, not giving the fighter a chance to get out of the way. Strange, it didn't even try.

A pillar of smoke farted out from the rear of the fighter and it began to lose altitude. He hesitated, wondering if he should destroy it completely.

Then Palomo was on the comms. He had two bandits on his tail. Harun looked for him, saw a jet of plasma crash into another plane, sending it spinning.

The words went through him like a sharpened icicle: _that's him._

But it was not, as Mars answered: _"I'm on_ their _6\. Just hang on."_

In the spherical web of metal and alien alloys and green plasma fire there was a brilliant ray of red light. Another alien fighter fell.

 _Stupefy!_ Harun thought suddenly, and actually laughed.

Immediately, another red discharge, followed by another; and Mars earned her third kill. This craft fell down in an erratic pattern, catching the side of one unfortunate alien craft that was flying laterally to it. Harun saw the spark of one.

 _"Jesus fucking Christ!"_ Palomo half-screamed. _"Thanks Mars!"_

 _"No prob Bob."_ she said, but immediately started taking fire from two enemy fighters.

 _"I've got them."_ Frost said, sounding calmer now. He fired a pair of Stingrays. Both hit, and fazed each fighter only a little. They split up before they could take further damage. One moved far too fast, rushing past Palomo, who instantly opened fire with his Avalanche. It struck and the fighter certainly seemed fazed by _that._

One of the fighters climbed up and Frost chose to follow that one. The remaining enemy fighter drifted into Harun's sights. It was flying directly at him.

He fired once, knowing that _once_ was all he would get. The fighter saw him and fired back.

Both hit their targets.

The laser cannon burned through the front of the fighter, where he thought the cockpit might have been. Where it _should_ have been.

He felt a surge of triumphant joy.

 _"Holy shit!"_ Mars cried. _"I saw that one! It went right_ through _the fighter!"_

On Harun's end was a great shudder in the cockpit, and the instruments and read outs turned off and turned back on. The reticule blinked out of existence for a second. Long enough for him to think it wouldn't come back at all.

Then it came back on and everything was fine. Well…everything was not fine. Engine 2 was working but Numero Uno was not. Weapons systems were fine: the laser cannon could still fire, and its turret could still and swing the cannon around without any noticeable hiccups.

The laser cannon was marked red in the heads up display; but again, not because it was damaged. The thing was starting to overheating. Automatically, flaps opened up on the sides of the cannon and fresh Atlantic air strode in. It dropped down to green in a second r two.

"How many bandits left?" Harun asked.

 _"Ten of them."_ Mars said. A bright red light pulsed in the evening light, making the orange sky momentarily bronze. _"Make that nine."_

 _Good girl._

Palomo on the comms: _"The bomber, it's firing again!"_

Indeed it was. The third egg came faster than the others, or maybe that was just his imagination. The bomber was slow moving. It'd closed the gap from it to the shore by about one hundred meters, certainly no more than a hundred and fifty.

" _Turk, we gotta go after that bomber!_ "

"Frost, status report!" Harun ordered, half-expecting no answer to come, for Lt. Jack Frost to be yet another body swallowed up by the Atlantic.

 _"Uh…at…at least half the squadron is down. Jefferson's plane's wounded and he had to bounce. Damn it, we should've focused on that fucking egg carton in the first place."_

No, thought Harun. Frost's would've been a true enough statement in an old fashioned battle. _Dogfights of World War II_ and that kind of thing; but not here, not with these alien fighters so powerful and so fast. Had they gone straight for the bomber, engaging and downing _none_ of the alien fighters they would probably have been in even worse shape.

He hated to think it, but they might have to let the Port get bombed. As much as it sucked, Elizabeth could be rebuilt, although at a heavy debt, as was the case with all repairs. It was naïve to think that absolutely _everyone_ had left the city, but at least the vast majority did. Perhaps only a homeless person or drifter or two (or three or four or a dozen) would be lost. The bombs, at far as he could tell, weren't exactly crossing whole continents.

Harun looked around, and saw that Frost's previous statement was one of panic and not reality. The two squadrons had been drastically reduced in size. Everyone else was in the ocean or heading back to base with a busted plane.

But the aliens weren't doing that much better. Or any better…really.

There were just five of the damn things left, and one of them drifted almost stupidly in front of Harun. It turned and flipped in order to dodge a missile, and then righted itself with a trembling jerk (he tried not to think of the g's acting on the alien body, surely the pilots had to be Mutons at least).

Just as he was about to fire not two…not three, but _four_ Stingray missiles ran crashed into the fighters backside. They all seemed to hit it in the same instant. It didn't disintegrate the craft but it recoiled as if punched, somersaulting erratically into the ocean like a badly flipped quarter.

 _Allah be praised for the Gripens!_

He looked at the hull integrity of his Raven. He still had plenty of fuel, just one of the engines was out.

Harun decided that they could go for the bomber now after all.

And off Harun Berna went, towards his strange and violent death.

[5]

"Mars. Palomo." he spoke into the comms. "Cover me!"

 _"Cover me?!"_ Palomo cried shrilly. _"What does that mean?"_

 _"Palomo shut the fuck up! We're with you Turk! I'm at your five. The last few Gripens are keeping the UFO fighters busy!"_

 _"I'm at your seven!"_ Palomo said. _"Mars! A UFO's tailing you!"_

 _"No he isn't!"_ shouted Frost.

A seemingly distant sound of an explosion.

 _"Thanks Frost."_ Maria said serenely. _"I owe you one."_

 _"H-happy to help!"_ the man shouted back, sounding honestly embarrassed. Sounding like the way Palomo was most of the time.

"Are any of the UFO fighters breaking off from the dogfighting to engage us?"

 _"Uh…I can't see any."_ Frost said. _"Remain on guard."_

 _"You got that right!"_ Palomo piped up.

They closed in on the bomber. Got within 200 km. Then within 100. With the long range of his Avalanche torpedoes, Palomo was already able to start firing. There was a thick rushing sound, and off the payload went. Fire and forget, as in you best forget about whatever was on the receiving end of it.

As they raced toward the bomber, Harun had a sudden terrible thought: It'll be just like Independence Day. The UFO would have an energy shield around it. The aliens "on the receiving end" would probably perceive the explosions as slight turbulence. Maybe not even that.

But he was wrong, and there was no sudden wall of blue light, only a sudden ball of orange and yellow quickly overtaken by plumes of deeply black smoke. The first round hit the UFO on its relative nose (the bow above the large eggs) but of course that didn't mean the cockpit was damaged. The second round hit one of the UFO's eggs, and Harun winced, not knowing what would happen. For a moment, he thought that perhaps everything from the southern tip of Africa to the Antarctic would be a steaming hole. But no…the egg the Avalanche had struck didn't explode. It didn't even rattle in its hold.

 _"That's it."_ he said grimly. His voice was hoarse, as if he'd been not just shouting (they had _all_ been shouting) but shrieking. Maybe they had been doing that too. _"That's all the ammo I got."_

 _"You got no cannon?"_

 _"No Phoenix gun if that's what you mean. Ten Avalanches was all I had."_ Palomo stated. _"Kent modded the Raven so it would have that instead of just six. Dunno how much it helped. They seemed to dodge my shots pretty well. Easier than they did the Stingrays."_

"Go home brother." Harun said softly. "You did well."

 _"Th-thank you sir."_ Palomo replied, sounding nervous. Sounding shy. Sounding like himself. He sped up so that he was nearly wing-to-wing with Harun. He favored the Staff Sergeant with a snappy salute, one that Harun returned.

He broke away from them.

"You know what we do now?" he asked.

 _"Hit it with everything we got sir."_

"Allah be praised."

[6]  
The effective firing range of the laser cannon he and Mars were using was 30 km. He'd learned sometime after the installation of it on his Raven that there'd been an older model, the Mark 1. It had a fairly terrible range of 20 km, about twice that of a regular Gatling cannon, and 50 percent more range than one of XCOM's Phoenix cannons. It'd been the Mark 1, and during its first test run it'd fried the UFO and forced it down fairly quickly. The problem had been the almost catastrophic damage done to that Raven in the process. It'd simply taken too long to get into range.

That interceptor had been scuttled, and replaced. The laser cannon had been put back into an operating lab. Adjustments were made here and there, and to the focusing lens in particular, to make a narrow beam that could travel further through the air without its light being bent by the molecules and particles as much.

When they opened fire on the bomber, in many ways it reminded Harun of artwork. In particular Islamic art, where you were not permitted to draw any kind of living form. It was a slight of sorts, to do such a thing, it's not like you could even make a person, or a plant, look better than Allah had conceived it. What was made instead, were geometrical patterns; a kind of abstract art.

The work that Harun and Mars did on the bomber was like this. Their laser cannons were not cannons at all, but pencils. His carved a series of sweeping arcs from the starboard of the bow all the way to its port. Mars followed behind him and follow his act. He glanced over his shoulder and saw he Mars wasn't firing in bursts. She was keeping the trigger held down and indeed the laser looked _very_ much like a pencil carving out black lines on a flat surface.

 _Glory to Allah! No return fire!_ And he began smiling. If they could get this done, and quickly, the alien fighters would retreat. With their objective failed they would have no reason to stick it out and potentially take more losses.

No. There was no _potentially_ about that. They _would_ take losses as long as the two of them were up in the air.

He expected that at any second countless holes would open up on the sides of the alien fighter and shred him with plasma fire from heavy cannons. It didn't happen.

He expected that he'd be struck with the light plasma cannons as the alien fighters reengaged them, having dealt with the remaining Gripens. But that didn't happen either.

Harun went around to the starboard of the ship and made an equally long cut on that as well, from the top of the craft to the bottom.

The heat gauge monitoring his laser climbed steadily. It was already in the orange. He could hear the steam hissing from the cannon…or maybe that was his imagination. He felt that the cockpit was suddenly _very_ hot…but maybe that was just in his head as well.

He pressed the button for the heat dump. The hissing was not loud but it was VERY LOUD _._ It was soft in his ears but coursed through his body like faint lighting.

The scars in the UFO smoked. The egg bombs especially did, but it came out in spurts and burps rather than a continuous breath. In between the coughs, Harun thought he could make out bolts of electricity in the wound of the eggs. He knew immediately it wasn't his imagination.

 _A chemical change happening,_ he thought, _the fuse making contact with the payload._

That could've been a good thing. If it was unstable and took a direct blast…

 _Life isn't like a movie!_

 _I at least have to try!_

 _But you don't know what could happen._

Yes, that was true enough. He pressed the comm. button. "Maria? You read me?"

Her Raven fired twice, two red flash-bulbs in the night sky, and yes it _was_ night time now. The sun was nothing but a sliver of a penny on the western horizon. _"Yeah Turk! What is it?"_

"I think I found a place I can concentrate my fire on! But it's dangerous! I need you to retreat!"

 _"Screw that I'm not leaving you!"_

"That's an order!" Harun roared. _"We're the same rank but I'm the squad leader and I'm ORDERING YOU TO RETREAT!"_

Silence on the comms. Harun could hear nothing but the roar of his Raven's engines and even that seemed from far away.

Finally Maria spoke on the comms. with a tone of disappointment and unmistakable hurt. _"Have it your way."_

Not even a "have it your way _sir_." She was pissed but her safety was more than worth her anger, even if she was mad at him for a long time after today…and she would be.

Harun watched her fly off.

Then something happened. A voice came to his head: _She….belongs…to us_.

Harun blinked rapidly. _What?_

 _She belongs,_ the voice said, _to us!_

Harun's eyes went to Maria. When she'd pulled away from the bomber, her Raven had been flying steady. Now it was rolling violently through the air, like a big invisible hand was turning it.

"Mars!" he called out to her. "You alright?"

No answer.

Her Raven started to dive toward the water. Not a steep dive, but a noticeable one. She'd hit the water within 30 seconds or so.

"No!" Harun screamed, and banked his Raven toward the alien bomber. He couldn't say for sure what was happening, only knew that the Sectoids had some version of telepathy, and there were rumors of another kind that could control people, the way ghosts like Danny Phantom could take over people's bodies just by flying into them. They were just rumors but…

 _Us,_ groaned the voice again, and a glass knife pierced his brain. He winced, her teeth clenched so hard they began to ache. He felt the slow pain crawl all the way up to his nose. Tears formed in his eyes and all of the panels

 _No...please no._

He aimed the laser cannon and fired. Its red line was turned into fuzzy bangs by his tears, and wherever it touched on the immense grey flank in front of him was turned into a swelling tumor of fire;

 _(she)_

and Harun thought of light reflecting off a shifting body of water, but only for a second or two. Red light flickered again and again in his blurred vision, and so did the cancerous fire.

 _(belongs)_

Then he pressed down on the trigger and nothing at all happened. He blinked more tears away, but the instruments were still blurry when he looked at them. He groped around for the lever that would dump the heat, but couldn't find it. His hands came down on switch after button after display…but none of them made any sense.

 _(TO US)_

More glass shards in his forehead. He thought he was turning the joystick but the Raven did not roll to either side.

 _No you_ aren't _turning the joystick. You're keeping it straight._

By the time he realized that he would crash into one of the eggs, he was already seconds away from impact. Maybe even less.

 _Why am I doing this?_

But he wasn't. He could feel the voice working inside him, trying to get him to push the stick forward. Sharply forward, so that he'd plummet into the ocean. He could feel another voice (the voice of his wife Isad and his family) trying to roll the plane in order to bank it _._ What he was doing, this keeping the craft straight toward certain dead…was a compromise.

"Allah is great!" Harun heard himself scream.

Now his vision did clear suddenly and the last thing he saw was one of the eggs, large and immense and swallowing up the entire view of the cockpit. The Raven's lasers had broken fresh holes in the egg. He could make out electrical cords jutting from the wound, crisscrossing and bending sharply like broken fingers. Out from the wound spurted a liquid chemical of some kind. Maybe the coolant, or a liquid fuse for the payload, or the bomber's fuel, or maybe it was all three.

"Allah is-" Harun said.

And then nothing after that.

[7]

Maria Estevez woke up with a headache. The world was bleary and her eyes hurt terribly. In fact her whole body hurt, in particular her head, which felt like King Kong had it in a chokehold and Kong was angry at the world.

The instruments in the cockpit were blurry and she blinked until her eyes could clear enough to make sense of them.

She remembered the mission. The alien fighter escorts. The massive bomber…

Harun.

She pushed the comms button and called out to him. No answer. Fear settled over her in a frigid grip. She pushed the button again, this time called out for Palomo. He wasn't there either, and that was just as much a shock. Then she remembered he'd bounced out after using his last Avalanche missile. She called out for the SANDF's air forces. For Jack Frost…which gave her jack shit.

 _Probably all dead,_ she thought, and the icy grip on her body tightened, making it hard to breathe.

She checked the readouts. She was heading north, the way she'd come, and was currently on the northern border of South Africa.

Maria thought about turning the Raven around, but a quick look at her fuel gauge told her that shit wasn't gonna happen without an Extender or similar plane to refuel this damn Raven in the air.

Plus, Mars wanted to be on the ground as soon as possible, and in a bed. She put the Raven on autopilot for home.

 _(she belongs to us)_

Maria's body shook. It shook violently, trying to get warm. But the chill remained there in her body. Maria began sobbing again, not knowing (but _feeling_ ) that the chill was a demon and that for her it had already been let in forever.


	2. Upgrades

Light Weapons ch2.

 **AN: Wanted an update to this story. Hope you guys enjoy it. Chapter 3 will be the last one.**

Captain Charlie "Rebel" Palomo thought: _We've finally evened the playing field._

He was staring up at the second Firestorm, as two sets of engineers went to work maintaining the craft.

For once in his life, he was feeling good. Awesome even.

The engineers in back worked a fuel pump into the rear quarters of the craft. _Right up its ass!_ Rebel thought happily. The fuel pump and hose was attached to one of the Elerium Generators in the lower levels of the base.

Unlike the fuel hose for the Ravens, the hoses for the Firestorms were colored purple. It was important the two were never confused. Putting Elerium in a conventional jet engine that couldn't handle it wouldn't do anything as dramatic as blowing up the craft or nuking the entire base. It _would,_ however, melt the jet engine and whatever happened to be below the plane at the time, from the metal floors to the reinforced concrete between said floors.

 _Yeah boys, let's try not to frig this up,_ Rebel thought, smiling.

The ten engineers in front of the craft were using a small crane to install the plasma cannons that'd just been built. One for Commander Mars, and one for Rebel. Just as the laser cannons had glowed faintly red (flaring into bright red when firing) these cannons glowed green.

But not faintly.

Instead, watching them, they seemed to pulse and throb. Much like a human heart…and probably alien ones as well.

The Ravens had been further augmented as the war went on. They were able to strap on two laser cannons, effectively doubling their firepower. They didn't have to worry nearly as much about fuel, thanks to the prototype hybrid engines that soaked up fuel just by being exposed to UV rays.

The Firestorms didn't have to worry about "lacking firepower," even though they only had just the one hard point.

From the tests they had run (virtual tests…but accurate ones), these cannons would melt the shit out of even the middle UFOs, which would only be able to do mild damage to the Firestorms. If even that.

The small and large scouts wouldn't be able to take on the Firestorms. Not even a little bit. Not even if the Firestorms were horribly outnumbered.

And they would be outnumbered on this next mission.

[2]

The target was an alien assault carrier. That was bad. An assault carrier meant a terror mission. Of the twenty countries that had originally funded the XCOM project, twelve had withdrawn. Two of them were won back, after operatives invaded the alien bases there.

It'd been awful, bloody work: a captain and two master sergeants had been loss. Damn near a fortune in terms of experience. But the missions had gotten done, and South Africa and Argentina were back with them.

According to the hyperwave relay, the carrier was heading for India. Huge country. Huge population. It would be a bloodbath if not treated with care. It was a surprise to the Africa base commander, Jonathon Saburo, that it hadn't happened sooner.

As he sat in his chair in Mission Control, he stared at the large blip. Trying not to think of what had happened to Australia. Half a dozen chryssalids, and the whole continent had been evacuated. Casualties in the hundreds of millions. The government hadn't technically withdrawn. They didn't exist anymore.

"Send out the Firestorms." he said, "Send in everything."

And as the blue blips moved in toward the red blip, Saburo leaned forward in his chair.

[3]

As the mobile elevator rose her up towards the cockpit, Maria Estevez tried to clear her mind. That was easier said than done. Her mind was racing more often than not…and how many of the thoughts were her own? Four months ago, just after Harun died, she might've had a definite answer for that: the answer of course, was _all_ of them were her own.

Psychosis. That's what Mars had thought at first. As the pilot training had gone on, it'd been nothing more than occasional murmurs, and always when she was either diving into or climbing out of sleep.

It had taken her a long time to finally open up about the voices in her head. It was only after some of the soldiers had started talking about it. The one who went by the nickname "Missionary" heard them almost constantly, and in loud whispers.

Missionary had talked about the voices first, and before you knew it, half a dozen people had stepped forward. It became the only thing base personnel would talk about.

It had annoyed Maria to no end. At the same time it convinced her to do the same. And yet, when Commander James Eric Gardener (or Gard as he was often called) called Mars in to his office, she had been sick with fear.

 _They're gonna can me after all!_

But they did not, and she had been in the PSI labs the following hour.

She had floated in there for only three days; to her it'd felt like a good year. No food or water necessary. The psychic/nutrient bath was all the food and water needed.

Under the bath, it'd felt like she was dreaming rather than being tested. Only a few hours in, Mars was certain that it wasn't really in a transparent jar, no…she was in a vast ocean. All of the universe was an ocean.

Most of the dreams weren't so good.

She dreamed she was a Muton in an urban center: she had raised her large plasma rifle and dumped half of the magazine into a pot-bellied, middle-aged woman hiding behind a dumpster. Her child next to her screamed in grief and terror. Mars laughed. Then there was a sound like the earth ripping in half, and an alloy cannon shot took her right in the spine. Mars pitched over, but managed to turn in time to see XCOM operatives in powered armor walking towards her, alien plasma weapons in hand.

She dreamed she was an Exalt defending a terminal during a Covert Op. She was reloading her laser machinegun. An XCOM assault trooper dashed to her and hit her with an arc charger. Just before she collapsed, Mars injected herself with a syringe. She immediately started coughing up blood.

She had a dream where she was an XCOM sniper wielding a plasma sniper rifle and perched on a rooftop. She had on the skeleton armor and had just hookshotted herself onto a ledge. There were a bunch of little Sectoids running around in the field in front of her, scrambling for cover. She picked them off one after the other, not missing once. Each Sectoid flying backwards sent a powerful tremor through her body. She was in the zone.

She had a dream about aliens in the sea, in a vast city that was slowly but surely turning itself on.

But of course that wasn't real. None of the aliens knew how to swim. The idea had been so ridiculous Mars had been able to hear her own laugh, even as she was in suspended animation.

Eventually, the dreams had died down, and she in a stark-white room with objects in front of her.

She was urged by a disembodied voice to lift them if she could. And she could, and she did. The vases floated in the air, the beach balls flew around. They vanished and were replaced by larger objects. Those floated too.

Eventually, the floating tests were over and done with. Next was the shield test. She was to imagine a wall, and she did. A battery of plasma weapons were fired at this imaginary wall, and all of them bounced away.

 _Keep it up!_ went the disembodied voice. Mars eventually realized it was the voice of Dr. Vahlen. Mars kept up the shield. In PSI-lab-time, it felt like Mars kept it up for an entire month. The knowledge didn't annoy or frustrate her—it _excited_ her.

At last, it was all done. She became vaguely aware of liquids falling down her body, as the container drained itself.

She opened her eyes, but only after a titanic effort. Dr. Vahlen stood in front of her.

"Well done Captain Estevez." Dr. Vahlen said.

[3]

But that was all past. No point focusing on that when she had a job to do right now.

She was in the Firestorm, now going through weapons check. Or weapon check anyways. The aliens now had twin linked plasma cannons on nearly all of their UFOs, not just the fighters or destroyers.

The Firestorms were badass, but not on that level. Not yet.

 _Plenty tough though,_ thought Mars, as her right hand settled on the joystick and her left on the thrust.

Den Mother spoke through the comms. "You have the sky commander."

"Copy that." Mars said. "My sky."

The Firestorm began to ascend, its elerium powered engines humming faintly, almost soothingly.

It didn't have VTOL technology; it used antigravity systems to hover. It rose up out of the base, facing east. The sky was deep blue behind her and pink in front of her, save for the yellow-white glow of the sun. It was four in the morning, at least in this time zone of Africa.

 _Let's party._

The Firestorm went from zero to Mach 4 in less than five seconds. The G-forces would've been devastating on her body if not for the force dampening system that surrounded the cockpit.

Palomo caught up with her almost immediately.

 _"_ _How you doin' Mars?"_ he asked, sounding much to cheerful to be the same Palomo who'd been afraid of his own shadow four months ago.

"Doing fine Rebel." Mars chuckled a bit at his nickname, "And I hope it stays that way.

 _"_ _Me too."_ Rebel said, and now he sounded like the nervous man she was familiar with.

She looked over her shoulder at him (which was easy, because the cockpit was seemingly transparent from the inside; she could look down and see the Indian Ocean underneath her) and saw a trail of blue behind his Firestorm. To Mars, it was almost beautiful.

The other Firestorm pilots arrived beside them. The first was.

[4]

This time, they were not met with allied forces before contact.

And dear sweet God was there contact.

They got a visual at 4:19 (a minute slower and Rebel might have cracked a stupid joke). They saw the assault carrier. That was easy enough. It resembled a battleship, more or less, and a battleship looked just like what the name said. A _ship._ In front of them, about a kilometer away, was a gigantic sliver of metal. It was nearly flat at the bottom, kept afloat by bulbous spheres that pulsed with blue light. Massive slanted compartments stood on top.

It floated high above the ocean, but even then Mars could see the disturbance in the

 _(there's a city in the sea there's a city in the sea)_

ocean. And what a disturbance there was, like demons were roiling beneath it and the ocean was so dark—

Rebel's voice. _"Mars, you still with me?"_

"Of course I am."

The fool asked that same stupid question all the time…but was it really foolish when the aliens had tried to pierce her brain before. If not for Turk…

"Is your mind shield holding up?" Mars asked.

 _"_ _It's fine and frisky."_

Most of the troops went into battle with mind shields now. Most pilots did too. It was mighty difficult gaining mental control over someone flying in a distant object that darted in and out of sight…but it _had_ happened before.

 _"_ _It's got an escort."_ Rebel said.

Mars saw that it did. Not four, not five, but _six_ destroyers. Medium sized craft that were larger about the same size as raiders but twice as armed and armored. Even from this distance, Mars could make out faint lights on the surface of the craft. Cameras perhaps, or gunports, or maybe just the exotic alien alloys catching the sun in an odd way.

The destroyer escorts were actually ahead of the battleship, closing in on the southern tip of India. The largest UFOs didn't resemble the flying saucers of the Independence Day. The small and medium sized craft totally did.

It didn't make sense that they were so far out ahead. That's what Mars thought until the fighters of XCOM Asia entered the scene.

[5]

XCOM Asia went by the nickname of Eastern Palace. The commander, Xu Zhang, named it so because of her love for Legend of Zelda.

The Palace base network had no Firestorms. What it did have was hangars full of Ravens and veteran pilots.

A team of eight was on the northern horizon. Their nicknames were based on cities. Dallas, Chicago, Delaware, Midland, Traverse, Salt Lake, Portland, and (of course) Vegas.

 _So we aren't hopelessly outnumbered after all,_ thought Mars.

"What kind of heat are you folks packing?" Mars asked.

 _"_ _Four laser cannons."_ said Vegas. _"I know that don't sound like much but—"_

"No it doesn't." Mars said.

 _"—_ _but they have supercapacitors."_

 _"_ _Pulse lasers?"_ Rebel said.

 _"_ _You betcha."_ Vegas said, obviously proud.

Pulse lasers were the next step up from beam lasers. In this long ass war, pulse lasers were the fourth tier of weapon research, as they had taken place after gauss weapons but before plasma weapons. Beam lasers were still mostly sufficient against the weaker aliens: the Sectoids and the Thin Men and the regular Floaters. Against the heartier ones—the Berserkers and Cyberdisks and those fucking Ethereals—the beam lasers were extremely weak, and would take dozens of shots to finally put down.

"What about the other four?" Mars asked.

 _"_ _We got plasma cannons."_ Traverse said.

"Holy shit!" Mars cried happily. "No kidding?"

 _"_ _None at all."_

 _"_ _We are nearing engagement range!"_ Salt Lake cried out.

In the distance, Mars could see thick trails of red light cut through the sky, followed by green bolts of searing plasma.

They struck home on the most forward of the alien fleet, the first destroyer. Distant explosions bloomed like faraway novas, but it barely made any sound at all. Then there was a bigger, brighter explosion. It swallowed the front half of the destroyer and smoke soon followed. Destroyer-1 immediately began to descend.

 _"_ _Direct hit!"_ Dallas (a woman) cried happily. _"Somebody gather the Dragon Balls for these poor fuckers!"_

 _"_ _Dallas shut the fuck up!"_ roared Vegas. _"This ain't grade school!"_

 _"_ _Really? It ain't? Well thanks for the update partner!"_

 _My God,_ Mars thought, _a bunch of fucking clowns are the air defense force of Asia._

Destroyer immediately returned fire. Charged green gas bolted through the sky. Mars' heart sank. Soon the screaming would start, and the panic. One of the Ravens would be blasted out of the sky, and then the numbers would just keep on dwindling as the fight went on.

But no.

The Raven pilots had already broken formation and were scattering. None of the enemy fire struck anything except for empty sky.

 _"_ _Let's join the fight Mars!"_ Palomo shouted. Before she could so much as open her mouth, Rebel boosted forward. The Firestorm looked like some strange angelic form, oddly graceful in a way the Raven fighters never would be. It felt that way even as the craft did nothing more complicated than rushing in a straight line.

 _That's nothing to be worrying about right now,_ thought Mars. In front of her, Rebel was already opening fire with his own plasma cannon.


	3. The Floating City

The Floating City

[1]

"Rebel" Palomo fired with his plasma cannon. He targeted Destroyer 3. Four green bolts struck home, slamming into the craft with such force that Mars thought she saw shockwaves pass through the hull. Bright yellow flowers bloomed on it, furling and spreading open through the sky.

Destroyer 3 took all the shots in stride.

Mars flew in low, staying as close to the water as she dared.

She could hear the whispers of the psi-capable aliens on board. The Sectoids and Commanders. There were at least two Ethereals on the bridge as well.

 _(wipe them away destroy them protect the SHIP the CAPITAL SHIP)_

Its broadside weapon ports (and there were at least ten) opened fire. The green plasma bolts did not come all at once, in a single wide line, but in short sporadic bursts. The ports at random intervals. The aim was also random. Most of them Mars didn't even have to dodge.

The ones she _did_ have to dodge were real heat seekers. They started out as small green dots about the size of her first and swelled like cancer as they rushed towards her (she thought fleetingly of those old Time Crisis games).

She cut the Firestorm to the left, and a bolt passed her on the right; she could hear it hissing. Another plasma bolt smashed into the water in front of her. The effect was like a grenade had gone off underwater.

A plume of water came up and struck the faint energy shield surrounding the craft. It ran off the cockpit visor, traveling away from the center in shimmering ribbons that were fucking beautiful. For a second, the destroyers and the rest of the world was lost in that shimmering curtain.

"Jesus!" Mars said, thinking that she would die for certain. She rose slightly, taking a glancing blow. The craft rattled.

"Fuck!" she cried, yawing the Firestorm to the right, because she had to move it somewhere.

The water peeled away and she could see again. Destroyer 3 was well in firing range now. Mars fired the cannon, which sounded much like any of the other plasma weapons the aliens used: like a strong and sharp passing of extremely heavy gas. It sounded funny. Maybe it even was.

But then the green and elongated bolts of heated gas came out of the cannon and that dried any and all laughter up. Mars saw bolts of plasma and thought of the Killing Curse from the Harry Potter books. That green flash was always followed by a body dropping to the ground, the victim's face frozen in a soundless scream.

And up here in the skies it was followed by an explosion, a plane corkscrewing into down into mother rock or cold ocean. Another family getting no body, or even a small part of the body—only a letter of condolences from an organization doomed to send out many.

No, that heated gas shit wasn't funny. Not at all.

Explosions rocked Destroyer 3's hull on the portside. Some of the broadside cannons were either disabled or destroyed. Either way they stopped firing. Mars smiled, relaxing a little. More explosions flared up on the roof of Destroyer 3. That was Palomo again. He was coming in hot, as the saying went.

 _Bullseye!_ That's what Rebel would be thinking, the frigging dork.

To the left, Destroyer 2 was critically injured and started falling toward the sea.

Mars felt the alien commanders on that ship die as an internal explosion reached them before the waters of the Indian Ocean did

 _(protect the CAPITAL SHIP protect the)_

Then the whole Eastern squadron brought their laser and plasma cannons to bear on Destroyer 3. This time the explosion visibly ruptured the alien craft, driving a large fissure from bow to stern.

A bridge image flashed through Mars' mind: she was on the bridge herself, not commanding it as an Ethereal but piloting it. She was a Sectoid Commander, her brain buzzing with activity. She was in front of one of the UFO flight computers. It was touched based…and then the computer system failed.

She banged on the monitor with her stubby little Sectoid fingers. The words "Critical Failure of Multiple Sytsems" flashed up in blue alien symbols. And then she was lost in a sea of rolling fire.

Mars snapped herself out of it, not only feeling dazed but feeling a great deal of pain. She opened a compartment beside the seat. It had a small med kit inside with painkillers. She swallowed one of them, and that did a world of good.

Mars thought: _These things don't stand a chance._

 _No. Don't think that Maria. Pride before the fall and all that._

"Eastern squadron." Mars said. "How's your status."

She braced herself, waiting to hear the casualties. Of course, she hadn't seen any friendlies get taken down, but she been focusing on her own shit. Pride before the fall indeed.

Vegas spoke, and it took Mars a moment to process what was said next: _"No casualties."_

Mars' mouth opened, and then closed. She said, the words aloud herself, as though. What exactly did he mean "no casualties?" Was Vegas high?

"Repeat that Eastern squadron?"

Midland pipped up, after keeping his trap shut since the squadron had shown up. _"He said 'We didn't lose anybody. I took quite a bit of damage though. The left wing is in the red. The right is in the yellow."_

 _"_ _You should head back to base Midland."_ Delaware said.

 _"_ _Negative."_ was the short answer. Mars waited to hear something else, but that was it.

"All destroyers are eliminated." Mars said, as if any of them needed to be told. "All that's left is the battleship."

That's what they all thought. And that was when the portal appeared. It was about fifty feet to the south of the battleship. It was immense: beside it the battleship might have been a small branch. It glowed bright purple at the edges and dark blue at the center. The air rippled around it. Bolts of electricity jumped from the center to the edges.

A ship came out of that immense portal, seeming at first to be a sharp iceberg made out of shining metal. It came with a roar that eclipsed all sound. A supernova would not be heard over that sound. It seemed to crush Mars with its weight. Her hair was pressed down into her skin.

"My God." Mars whispered.

None of the other pilots said anything.

It could have been a small city. It was the size and relative shape of a sauce bowl, which actually struck Mars as pretty funny.

Engines and antigrav systems protruded from the bottom in jagged edges that made them look like metal splinters. They glow faintly blew and white.

Massive guns pointed out from the sides, plasma cannons that were each the size of small UFOs. They glowed green like noxious Tommyknocker light. Caverns were exposed on the sides and already there were small fighter UFOs coming out.

 _"_ _I don't think the battleship was the main ship, the one getting escorted."_ Rebel said.

Mars knew what it was immediately. She could hear the whispers of numerous psi users aboard. They had many voices, and many accents even, but the words were the same.

And there were only two.

 _TEMPLE SHIP_


	4. Final Chapter

Final Chapter

 **AN: Okay this story is basically done now for good. Unless I make changes. Which I probably won't. Because it's done now. For good. Kind of a rushed ending, I know. I rush through chapters of "Light Weapons" more than any other story, and hopefully it won't have too many errors as a result. You guys notice I do that a lot. No excuse, but as I said, I am writing other stories than the Fan Fiction that I write for craps and cackles.**

 **But I wanted it to be done. Which it is now. For good.  
PS: OpenXCOM with Ironman settings. Talk about tense!**

 **PPS: Gauss weapons still suck.**

 **PPPS: Maybe change the name to "Enemy Above?"**

Everything is not going to be okay

-A Scanner Darkly

[1]

That was when the nightmare for the day truly started. If asked, Mars would have honestly told you a couple hours ago that the aliens _had_ no more tricks under their sleeve.

The UFO engines and computers, the plasma weaponry, the alien alloys, and the alien themselves—all had been researched. Much of it had been reverse engineered.

The funny shaped alien weapons had been converted into ones more appropriate for human hands with no reduction in power.

The UFO flight computers had been converted into targeting systems for the Firestorms. They'd gained info on every alien ship, from the Goomba-like scouts waiting to be stepped on, to the supply barges with their vast storage unit big enough for a Sectopod or two, to the battleship.

The data on alien lifeforms allowed the soldiers to better target the alien's vitals, effectively increasing the damage that could be done with a single shot. They had Psions. _Master_ level Psions (like Missionary) that could try mind control and have guaranteed success on everything but a Sectoid Commander or an Ethereal. Technology had evolved not just in leaps and bounds, but in fucking _sprints_. They had powered armor, gigantic exoskeletons. They had soldiers with their DNA altered. They had to deal with jokes about being compared to the X-Men. They had to deal with jokes about being the Splicers from Bioshock.

There _were_ no other tricks. No way. No how.

No such luck.

[2]

The sky was eerily silent. The Temple Ship was loomed in front of them, a grotesque city

 _(in the sea there's a city in the sea)_

full of terrible machines and destruction.

 _We've lost,_ Maria thought and the thought was a queer relief

(what? why?)

and had they really been stupid enough to think that they had won? That bastardizing the advanced materials would matter? That a few hundred alien casualties would stop the inevitable? Fools. All of

 _(you)_

had been fools. Bursting with misplaced pride and misplaced intentions. Look upon us and despair, humans. Look upon our ancient weapon—our colossus, our Demon—that you would slay with your tiny swords.

Mars shook her head. _Get out! Get out!_ "Everyone..."

She didn't hear what she said next. She didn't hear much of anything. She heard Traverse shout in shock and fear, and more shouts from the other pilots. Nothing that she could make sense of.

Mars thought that perhaps she'd told everyone to open fire. That's what had ended up happening, and the results were no surprise but still horrifying just the same.

Later, Mars would think that perhaps she'd told them to retreat. That would've been the smart thing. The ground troops encountered unknown enemies all the time. In some cases, like with the Chrysalids on the first terror mission (and all the terror missions after that), it meant a hasty-as-hell retreat.

But a retreat isn't what happened. On the battleship, a massive turret began to rotate. Unlike most alien ships, it didn't fire something that could be called plasma. It fired a fusion lance. It cut through the air, a brilliant blue light that left an afterimage in the eye.

It took Vegas' plane and completely vaporized it. There wasn't even enough time to scream on the radio.

A second blue line cut through the air. This time, it was Midland who _did_ have time to scream...but only once.

That enemy fire was met—far too late—by plasma and laser bolts from the rest of Eastern squadron, and from Rebel. It opened wounds on the battleship, but not large ones.

The fusion turret continued to swivel, impossibly fast for its massive size. It began to warm up again, and Mars' body clenched.

 _Who dies next?_

But then the turret stopped. It stopped glowing, as the fusion reaction was shut down. It rotated to its neutral position.

 _What the hell is going on?_

She looked toward the Temple Ship. Just _looking_ at it was hurting her. Just seeing it for a few moments made the ship seem to _grow_ in size. At the same time, it seemed the distance between her and it was getting larger.

Mars felt the psionic wave coming long before she saw it. Her mind clenched, almost like it as a skeletal muscle in the process of a great feat. Her hairs stood on end, and she felt a great force somewhere inside the ship. It seemed to press her entire body backward. Then a great shudder—

Her hand moved up instantly, on mere reflex. The psychokinetic field she made was not large—she wasn't _that good_ —but it was strong.

Purple light streamed across the length of the Temple Ship, from back to front, traveling in large cords that did not curve but bent at hard angles. An orb appeared on the tip of the capital ship—a large purple sphere. It swirled and writhed with so much power that it looked truly unstable.

 _If anything were to touch that,_ Mars thought, _it wouldn't even be destroyed. It wouldn't even be vaporized. It would just be_ GONE. _It would completely cease to exist that would be that._

"Guys!" Charles Palomo said. "I think we should—"

And Charles Palomo said nothing after that.

The whirling sphere of psionic energy exploded out. It was contained one second. The next—a tidal wall of psychic energy was hurtling towards them. There was no point calling it big, or massive, or gigantic, or immense. It size seemed to eclipse everything. It was greater than existence itself.

Palomo's Firestorm was the first to be hit. His craft winked out of existence and so did he. Next up was Traverse, who did have time to scream.

But only once.

Then the psychic wave upon Mars. Mars with her pathetic psychic shield.

The wave passed her, and its bright purple light robbed her of sight completely. She was seemingly pulled apart in ten different directions at once.

 _That's it. I'm dead._

She saw—in her mind's eye—a great planet. A gas giant. A green gas giant, with ten different moons around it. She alien space stations surrounding the moons. She saw Thin Men shedding their skin, becoming horrible man-snake things with long fangs that dripped venom.

She saw the snake aliens and the Mutons strapped in a chamber not much different from the ones in the psi-labs. Only these aliens were attached through cords that traveled almost throughout their entire bodies. They glowed with faint purple light, a loud humming from somewhere below the chamber, and the creatures writhed back and forth in agony. At last, they were still. Dead.

Another image. Humans attached to the same machines, subject to the same trials. A black man in his late 40s. A redhead girl with a red "Jesus Loves Me" shirt. A fat white man in swimming trunks with bronze skin. A fat girl with cuts near her wrists. Another black guy with green-dyed hair that looked suspiciously similar to that little known drummer in Madison's Murder who'd gone missing two months ago.

One by one they Mars watched them fail...with the exception of the 40 year old man, whose eyes began to glow faintly.

Another image, Maria Estevez herself, strapped to a machine. Her eyes glittered like nearby stars.

Then the voice...

 _(You have succeeded...where we have failed...)_

[3]

She was in one of their psychic chambers. Cords emerged from all over her body. They attached to different parts of the chamber's smooth inner walls.

In front of her was an Ethereal. One with an even more ornate helmet than the ones encountered in the field. It wore flowing purple robes instead of red ones. Its psionic presence was enormous and so was its pull. Mars felt herself being sucked in towards the creature as though it was a black hole.

It introduced itself as the Uber-Ethereal.

 _Hello New One,_ it said.

 _Hello yourself,_ she said.

 _You have succeeded where we have failed. You will be our weapon against the coming Threat. You will save us all. You will help us win the war against your people. For their own good. Then we will destroy the Ultimate Threat._

Maria Estevez said nothing. For her, she knew the battle was over. By herself, she was now almost completely powerful. Most of the wires webbed through important sections of her body: her brain, her heart, her spine. She would paralyze herself just trying to escape.

She was able to speak through her mouth, but only with a great effort. "I will...do as you...ask."

She sensed the creature smile under its large, decorative mask..

She was able to conceal her thoughts as she said this. She made a facial blank, and a psychic one.

The Uber-Ethereal left, leaving her under the watchful eye of Ethereal Leaders.

She was able to make contact with the Ethereal Device. It had been dormant this whole time. Now it was on. The Psion nicknamed Missionary was in front of it, struggling to use her psychic abilities to activate it.

All of a sudden, the glowing orb began to speak to her, _They have me captured._

Missionary screamed in fear and shock. It was actually pretty funny.

 _Who is this,_ Missionary asked. Her telepathy was crisp and clear; not fuzzy at all, like it was for the other Psions.

 _This is Maria Estevez._

 _Mars?_

 _Yes. I have been captured. I am on the Temple Ship. The Ethereal device is activated._

 _We will rescue you._

 _No,_ Mars said, as loudly as she dared. In front of her, the Ethereal Leaders tilted their heads. They knew something had happened, but not what.

 _You have the coordinate to the Temple Ship. The Ethereal Device will guide you in. It ill deactivate their shields._

Missionary had been on her ass up until this point. The scare Mars had given her had been bad. But already the slender blonde Medic was getting her composure back. It seemed karmic (?) that Missionary had come on a whim. A reward for completing an abduction in North America. She would be the key to winning the First Alien war...and what a Long War it had been.

 _The device will protect you from the Uber-Ethereal's psychic wall,_ Mars said. _It will allow you to enter on the landing pad at the stern. Kill them. Kill them Missionary..._

 _Kill them all..._


End file.
